New York Public Library Puts 20,000 Hi-Res Maps Online & Makes Them Free to Download

[Jazzy]

Whether you’re like me and simply love the imaginative exercise of tracing a map’s lines and contours and absorbing information, or you love to do that and you get paid for it, you’ll find innumerable ways to spend your time on the new Open Access Maps project at the New York Public Library. The NYPL announces the release with the explanation below:

The Lionel Pincus & Princess Firyal Map Division is very proud to announce the release of more than 20,000 cartographic works as high resolution downloads. We believe these maps have no known US copyright restrictions.* To the extent that some jurisdictions grant NYPL an additional copyright in the digital reproductions of these maps, NYPL is distributing these images under a Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication. The maps can be viewed through the New York Public Library’s Digital Collections page, and downloaded (!), through the Map Warper.

What does this mean? Simply put, “it means you can have the maps, all of them if you want, for free, in high resolution.” Maps like that above, of New York’s Central Park, issued in 1863, ten years before Frederick Law Olmstead and Calvert Vaux completed their historic re-design.

Full article

 

[Evil Eye]

This sounds pretty awesome.
*checks it out.*

 

[Nebulous]

“it means you can have the maps, all of them if you want, for free, in high resolution

Uh.... I feel so fortunate now

 

[Evil Eye]

What, don't like maps, Nebulous?

 

[Nebulous]

Yeah, thats why I am so fortunate now

 

[Jazzy]

I'm going to get some, frame them and hang them in my library.